


Cybertronian Fauna: An Unofficial Guidebook

by autobotscoutriella



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Flora & Fauna, Crossposted from Dreamwidth, Gen, In which I try to sound like I understand biology while making up alien animals, Meta, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24848944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: Headcanons about vaguely weird Cybertronian fauna, mostly based on fish and reptiles because I happen to like those. Only vaguely science-adjacent.
Kudos: 6





	1. Introduction/Frilled Rockhopper

**Author's Note:**

> So, over the past couple of years I've been writing up headcanons about vaguely weird Cybertronian animals over on [Dreamwidth](https://autobotscoutriella.dreamwidth.org/tag/cybertronian+fauna), mostly just stuff that I've come up with while bored at work after watching way too many nature documentaries. Someone finally suggested that I crosspost them to AO3 for easy linking, since right now they're all in separate posts, so here they are! 
> 
> I am not a biologist, veterinarian, wildlife expert, or in any way qualified to come up with alien animals that adhere to real-world plausibility, so I've basically just handwaved actual biology with "it's an alien planet, stuff works differently there". Some of them are basically real animals made out of metal, but I tried to add a few alien twists even to the really basic ones. Also, yes, I'm aware that canonically Cybertron may or may not have _water_ , but I wanted marine animals, so I headcanoned something about Cybertron having some type of equivalent that makes up "seas". 
> 
> I've kept all the original author notes from Dreamwidth intact, since those discuss where I got the inspiration for a few of these. They're not particularly important and can be skipped if you don't care.
> 
> And with that, on to the original first author's note and first animal!
> 
> \---  
> This summer I decided I needed some Cybertronian fauna beyond the usual cybercats and turbofoxes for fic purposes (I love those, don't get me wrong, but I like variety in my worldbuilding) and then promptly did nothing with it after scribbling some notes during downtime at work. So I'm finally getting around to posting them somewhere, just in case someone else wants random alien animals as much as I do. Sadly, there is currently no art for most of these, because I can't draw to save my life.  
> First up: the non-sentient robot dinosaur based on the scientifically inaccurate but adorable plastic Dilophosaurus on my desk at work!

**Frilled Rockhopper**

These small omnivorous bipedal lizards average about 4-5 feet tall* at the head, but might reach 7 feet long measured from snout to tail. Their most dramatic physical feature is a large, iridescent neck frill, made of flexible metal and used for mating displays, threat displays, and pack communication. Females** are larger and heavier than males, though less dramatically colored; hatchlings of all genders are a uniform dull green-gray, which darkens to silver-highlighted teal in adult females and silver-streaked blues and purples in adult males.

They're found primarily in the foothills and lower mountain slopes of the Manganese Mountains, where they're generally seen as harmless if occasionally annoying scavengers. While they're very fast and excellent climbers even on steep slopes, they tend to steer clear of larger creatures that could be predators. They can be territorial during hatchling season, but on the whole are easily shooed away; some large or persistent individuals are known to be particularly aggressive, but their relatively small size makes it fairly safe for an adult Cybertronian to ignore them. Some local dialects refer to them as "rockjumpers" instead of "rockhoppers".***

While desperation will lead a starving mech to try anything, they are not generally considered edible in any form. They're too small to provide much energon, and too fast for catching them to be worth the trouble.

*Your Size May Vary, depending on preferred canon; I based this off canon/headcanons around Transformers Prime and sized them accordingly. They're supposed to be around knee height to the average Cybertronian--in terms of relative sizes and general opinions, rockhoppers are the equivalent to geese.

**It makes very little sense for a robotic alien planet to have sexually dimorphic fauna that match perfectly onto Earth's concept of the same, and at some point I'll probably rework this to figure out what alien animal genders might look like. I didn't think about it too hard at the time, other than "what if I merged geese with the Jurassic Park concept of a dilophosaurus".

***This is because I started writing the chapter of the fic that mentioned rockhoppers before I wrote down any notes on them, and had one character refer to them as "rockjumpers". I wasn't ready to start editing at the time, so I just built it into the concept instead.


	2. Sandsharks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuing the list of Cybertronian fauna thought up at work this summer and then forgotten for several months, today's alien animal is a shark!  
> ...Basically just a shark, yeah. There's not a lot of ways you can make that design more streamlined, and given the existence of shark-moded beastformers, it seems that Cybertronian sharks aren't terribly alien.

**Sandsharks** *

Sandsharks are medium-sized aquatic hunters found in coastal waters and around underwater metal formations or wrecks. Adults are slightly smaller than an average adult Cybertronian (18-23 feet in the size charts I'm using), usually weigh up to four tons, and are slightly ventrally flattened to allow for easier movement in shallow seas. They rely on electromagnetic fields to seek out prey--usually smaller aquatic animals-- and are usually found hunting in murky waters at dawn and dusk; while they do have visual sensors, vision isn't a major part of their typical hunting strategy. Generally, their external plating ranges in color from tan to deep copper.

There are two subspecies: the more common copper sandshark and the rare cobalt sandshark. Copper sandsharks are distinguished by verdigris tinting down the back, sides, and pectoral fins in older adults, and are more likely to be found in shallower water near the shore. Cobalt sandsharks develop blue streaks running back from the optic socket on both sides, which widen and darken with age, and tend to congregate around underwater formations rather than approaching shore.

Sandsharks tend to be fairly social, and are rarely skittish around larger creatures; copper sandsharks often hunt in groups, though cobalt sandsharks rarely do.

*"Sand shark" is another name for the sand tiger/raggedtooth shark, which I didn't think to google ahead of time before naming the species. Whoops.


	3. Double-Pointed Shipstalkers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Cybertronian fauna concepts from this summer's "Christina was bored at work" files, just in time for the holidays! This time, it's another, slightly more alien shark; sandsharks are more or less just robot sharks, but for this one I went just a little weirder and I like it a lot better.  
> I should also note, for purposes of the Cybertronian shark headcanons, I've merged information from a few different continuities; some say Cybertron doesn't have any water at all, some have seas made of oil, and others don't address it outside of things like the Rust Sea or Mithril Sea showing up on maps, so I've gone with "it's not water, but it's some type of liquid that animals can move around in and they had to have some kind of water traffic, why else would there be Cybertronians with aquatic alt-modes". It works for the stuff I write, anyway.

**Double-Pointed Shipstalkers**

Shipstalker sharks are easy to identify from a distance due to their distinctive double-pointed dorsal fin, with the larger 'point' of the fin in the front. Their admittedly ominous name comes from their admittedly ominous tendency to shadow surface objects--including ships, but also including debris and, in some cases, other large marine animals. While this habit caused quite a bit of alarm to sea travelers during the Golden Age, they didn't appear to be hunting the ships themselves; biologists speculated that it was probably a hunting strategy, though it was never confirmed.

Reaching up to 35 feet long, shipstalkers are slightly larger than the average adult Cybertronian*, but tend to be fairly slender and fast-moving; They have four visible rows of teeth and two sets of optics, both of which are usually red (though the species can range from gold to dark maroon). Adults range in color from a dull medium blue to almost black on the dorsal side, sometimes with dark blue-grey striped patterns, and pale blue to light grey on the ventral side. Juveniles often have bright silver spot patterns on their ventral sides that fade with age.

Shipstalkers are solitary hunters, ranging from the surface down to the depths and back again; while they're large enough to be a threat to an adult Cybertronian and are known to be curious about the ships or marine beastformers that encounter them, they are rarely aggressive, and since they avoid the coasts, most Cybertronians will never encounter one.

They are thought to have gone extinct during the war, but this has not been confirmed.

*Given in the size ranges I tend to work at, headcanon-wise--adjust as needed for different average size headcanons.


	4. Static Sharks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost to the end of the stuff from the summer notes, and then I'll have to start being creative with my fauna headcanons again XD Anyway, today you get the last set of sharks, which is probably my favorite out of all of these--I'm not under the illusion they're particularly creative, but they're based on odder types of rays and deep-water sharks rather than the reef and oceanic sharks I based the last two on.

**Static Sharks**

Static sharks are large, dorsally flattened sharks known primarily for their electric shock abilities, used for hunting and defense. Like sandsharks, they're usually found in murky water, but unlike sandsharks, they do not use their optics for hunting at all and many sub-species are completely blind. Static sharks have long, whip-like tails that can be used to discharge electricity into the water, stunning entire schools of small fish and anything else that happens to be in the way, and are usually dark grey-green to blend in with their surroundings; juveniles resemble eels with fins, while adults are bulkier with blunt heads. while they do not generally hunt Cybertronians, they can be territorial and aggressive if provoked. Most adults can stun a fully-grown Cybertronian, and some sub-species might be able to kill an unlucky one; however, they tend not to use full power in most defensive situations. Unlike organic sharks and most Cybertronian sharks, static sharks are capable of moving and functioning outside of the water and are often found in damp areas around the coast.

There are three sub-species, distinguished by color and region. Silvertip static sharks, named for the bright silver spot patterns on their fins and tails that are thought to attract smaller fish, are the rarest sub-species, found only along one coastline of the Mithril Sea; they're usually about 30 feet long. Blind static sharks, the smallest of the three at 18-19 feet, have no optic sensors and rely entirely on EM fields for hunting; their shocks are not powerful enough to stun a large or heavily-armored Cybertronian, which most Cybertronians find convenient since they are the most likely type to be found significant distances from the coast and therefore the most likely to encounter non-aquatic beings. The largest sub-species, rust-striped static sharks, can range up to 35 feet, have rusty red stripe patterns along their backs and small bright gold optics; these are the only sub-species with a powerful enough shock to be fatal to the average Cybertronian. These are more common than silvertips and range around most of the coasts.

*As always, sizes are given in relation to a universe where the average size of a Cybertronian is about 25 feet; feel free to adjust up or down to match other universes.


	5. Waveriders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last of the headcanons I wrote up over the summer, so after this I'll have to start coming up with new stuff again! Time to break out the shark documentary DVDs, I think...  
> This particular one was the result of an Avatar: The Last Airbender binge-watching session, so it's a little more out there than some of the previous stuff (depending on your opinion of the dinosaur).

**Waveriders**

Waveriders are small, four-limbed pseudo-reptilians (their morphology defies easy classification) known and named for their tendency to hunt in rough water, skimming along the top of the waves and diving under for up to several hours at a time to grab small marine animals with sharp beaks.* While tiny, they're resilient; a tough back shell with three distinct spinal ridges protects a much softer, more flexible mesh body, and is shed periodically throughout life as the waverider grows. They are rapid swimmers, excellent divers, and thrive in harsh marine conditions with extreme temperatures or chemicals. On land, however, they can be slow and clumsy due to having limbs better suited to paddling than walking.

They form decently sized family groups, consisting of two or three adult pairs or trios plus between eight and fourteen young each. They can reproduce in sets of either two or three, with trios producing more young on average than pairs; there are reports that some regional sub-species mate for life, but this has not been confirmed. They can be found all over Cybertron, though they are more common closer to the poles than the equator.

Body patterning is heavily regional, ranging from rusty spots to iridescent stripes. Young hatch out of flexible eggs covered in soft bristles rather than shells; these are shed in early adolescence and replaced with a flexible version of a shell that will eventually harden into its adult form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a robot turtle-duck. I'll admit it.


	6. Magma Sharks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And after a break to recharge my animal-inventing creativity, Cybertronian Fauna posts are back! Today we've got (surprise, surprise)...  
> MORE SHARKS.  
> For this one, I headcanon that Cybertron does have a form of energon "magma" as part of its makeup; it's deep under the surface, superheated into essentially liquid, and is highly volatile, unlike the cooler semi-solid energon deposits that are mined and refined into usable fuel for Cybertronians. It can be accessed through drilling down deep, or through volcanic vents here and there (mostly deactivated by the war). It can be refined just like semi-solid energon, but there's not much of it and it's difficult to work with, so it remained mostly intact until the war made them desperate.

**Magma Sharks**

Magma sharks are tiny fast-moving sharks with remarkable temperature tolerance, surviving in the deep energon magma veins running around Cybertron's core. They are capable of surviving in cooler waters and on land for short periods of time and sometimes venture out when something disturbs their habitat (like deep-core drilling or tunneling) or when the metal detritus and small heat-seeking shellfish that they live on run low, but the magma serves as protection from larger predators. Magma sharks only average 5-8 feet long, though some record-settingly large individuals might reach ten feet, and have bright copper plating with red and gold streak patterning along their backs; it serves as perfect camouflage in their natural habitat of volatile, superheated energon, but stands out jarringly in dark waters or on the surface, and large marine predators sometimes hunt around volcanic vents, which usually serve as the sharks' exit from the magma veins.

They are highly active and social creatures, grouping in pods of up to 30 individuals, and have been known to hunt larger creatures as a group, though for the most part they're scavengers. Juveniles have extremely bright red-gold mottling patterns across their entire bodies that fades into spots and streaks with age; each pattern is unique and can be used to identify individual members of the species, with hatchmates often having similar patterning to their parents. They traditionally mate in trines rather than pairs, though pair bonds aren't unheard of, and have 8-10 young at a time.

Cybertronians rarely encounter them on the surface, but high-temperature mining projects, volcano or deep-sea exploration, and core tunnel projects tend to bring magma sharks into contact with surface-dwellers. They are not officially considered dangerous due to their small size; however, when encountered they frequently cause injuries to miners and tunnel workers who are caught off-guard by their speed and sharp fangs. Since they are capable of surviving in appropriately heated water, they were sometimes kept as exotic pets during the Golden Age, but they were extremely expensive and didn't tend to thrive away from their natural habitat.

Other dialects refer to them as lavasharks, comet sharks (due to the "heat trail" they leave behind on contact with cool water), or magmite sharks. At one point in the distant past, they were considered sacred by a small religious group that surrounded energon magma with ritual, considering it the "living" blood of Primus as opposed to the semi-solid deposits found outside of superheated veins.


	7. Cyan Wasp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a while since I've done any of these! I have a few written up that I'm going to try to post over the next week or so; for today, I have one that cropped up in a recent fic, inspired by a combination of rewatching some old Metroid Prime Let's Plays and cleaning out my shed this weekend to remove old nests before the My Third Least Favorite Insects return to haunt the grill again this year.

**Cyan Wasp**

Cyan wasps are an essential part of the Summer Experience in the southern hemispheres of Cybertron, though they're probably not anyone's favorite part (except, perhaps, for the local entomologists). These bright green and gold-striped creatures are large, about the length of an average Cybertronian's finger, and sensitive audial sensors can pick up the buzz of tiny metal-mesh wings from thirty to forty yards away. Despite this size, however, slender bodies and strategic wing positioning makes them remarkably maneuverable, and they're extremely difficult to swat. Their distinctive high-pitched alarm trill is an all-too familiar warning that some unlucky spark has gotten within twenty yards or so of a hive; mechs in this range are advised to move away quickly, as wasp drones immediately rally to this sound, and while the small electric shock delivered from a cyan wasp's tail-mounted stinger is unlikely to harm a Cybertronian and may not even bother a larger one, receiving multiple shocks in quick succession can cause pain, twitching, or even seizures as the electricity overwhelms the nervous system. However, aside from when they sense threats to their hive, cyan wasps are nonaggressive and generally restrict themselves to hovering around (and sometimes falling in) mechs' energon cubes.

Their name comes from the bioluminescent stripes on their abdomens, which flash brilliant blue patterns that can be used for communication and mating displays. They live in hives ruled by one or two queens and filled with soldier and worker drones; hive size and number of queens varies based on location (with the furthest southern strains being more likely to have multiple queens and extremely large hives).

In some areas, they're considered a delicacy if properly dried, though they don't provide much in the way of energon. Insecticons often have a taste for them, and it's not uncommon to find higher concentrations of insecticon nests in areas with large cyan wasp hives.


	8. Windfoils

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been too long for one of these, but I got my sea-animal documentaries back from the library (okay, they're not mine, the library made me return them for a while), so it's time for more Dubious Cybertronian Fauna! In this case, it's probably fairly obvious what they're based on, but I wanted to move away from the Cybertronian oceans that may or may not actually exist in most continuities.  
> Hat tip to [thesoundlessvoid](thesoundlessvoid.tumblr.com) for the name--I had a general concept, but absolutely no clue what I should call them.

**Windfoil**

Very few Cybertronians have ever actually seen one of these tiny, near-transparent creatures, and those who have sometimes mistake them for odd reflections or maybe just bits of drifting scrap. Windfoils are small, getting no bigger than the average Cybertronian's hand, and from most angles are almost entirely invisible. Calling them "creatures" is sometimes considered a stretch, since there isn't much to them; windfoils, on the surface, are little more than thin-stretched glass across a wire- and energon-line framework with a tiny processor and energon system set in the general center. Incredibly light and fragile, windfoils tend to float around on air currents, and are usually seen snagged on outcrops or crystal plants in their habitat of the Northern Canyons. Larger varieties sometimes have small fans that allow them to propel themselves, but their small size means their mobility is very limited.

However, their apparent simplicity is deceptive; in the right lighting or from the right angle, windfoils reflect back iridescent colors and patterns, producing a beautiful semi-transparent glow. No one is quite sure exactly why, but the prevailing theory is that the colors are meant to attract their primary food source, small insectoids that provide just enough energon for the small amount windfoils require. It may also serve as a distraction or deterrent to predators, though they have very few of those. Additionally, the edges of their glass frames are layered with tiny, sticky acid sacs, produced from energon, which paralyze any insectoid that happens to bump up against them; a creature biting down on a windfoil would end up with acid burns, as would any Cybertronian who happened to brush up against or try to catch one. The acid is not strong enough to do significant damage to any armored Cybertronian, but a very small or very young one might end up with scars. In the darkness of the caves they prefer, they are extremely hard to see, making it all too easy to stumble into one without ever knowing what caused the pain.

Windfoils are naturally found only in the Northern Canyons and the associated cave systems outside of Nova Cronum, where the air currents provide them with the ability to move and their preferred prey is in abundance. Since this area is largely uninhabited, most Cybertronians never encounter one in the wild, and not much is known about them. However, during the Golden Age, some mechs with the social status to afford it would keep tanks of them as a sort of living art installation. They were also supposedly released into the Helix and Praxis crystal gardens for similar reasons, though between the unsuitability of the local climate and the damage those cities took in the war, none survived long.


	9. Mechallodyles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a lengthy break due to work things, Cybertronian Fauna is back! This week, we're returning to "things inspired by the tiny plastic animals on my desk," which at the moment, due to a shortage of tiny plastic animals, means one thing: DINOSAURS.  
> Well, tiny dinosaurs.  
> Okay, they're lizards. But they were loosely INSPIRED by dinosaurs.  
> Once again, credit to [thesoundlessvoid](thesoundlessvoid.tumblr.com) for the name!

**Mechallodyle**

These small fast-moving lizards are extremely common across almost all of Cybertron's surface, with the exception of the poles and volcanic regions, due to being remarkably hardy despite their small size. Mechallodyles resemble small metal geckos, with four limbs and plating made up of hundreds of tiny segments that allows for extreme flexibility; their front limbs more closely resemble a hand than a foot, and have remarkable grip strength proportional to their size, allowing them to climb almost any surface. A long, pointed snout with two rows of sharp inward-curving teeth makes them rather unpleasant to grab for any mech with light armor. In general, mechallodyles are close to the size of an average Cybertronian's hand, though some regional subspecies skew larger or smaller depending on their habitat--the Mithric Sea subspecies are particularly large, sometimes reaching four feet long from head to tail, while the desert variety found around the Sonic Canyons may be a foot long or less. Colors are regionally dependent as well, with each subspecies adapting to blend into its environment: desert mechallodyles are often tan, with black and gold markings, while the Mithril Sea mechallodyles are a gray-blue tint to match their semi-aquatic environment.

Juvenile mechallodyles more closely resemble geckos than their adult counterparts; just before reaching full size, mechallodyle plating expands to form a ridge of spines along the back, partially webbed to form a mesh frill that can be raised or lowered and is used to defend them from predators. Their second row of teeth also develops around this time. The Mithril Sea subspecies is partially aquatic and an excellent swimmer, with an almost fully webbed frill and partially webbed "fingers" as well; the desert subspecies, however, have less mesh on the ridge, with jagged, rough plating and long spines. The aquatic subspecies is often preyed on by young static sharks.

Juvenile mechallodyles are scavengers and grazers, feeding off tiny energon veins close to Cybertron's surface along with any wrecked vehicles or even dead Cybertronians they can get to. Once their teeth develop, adult mechallodyles also hunt cyan wasps and glitchmice, though they won't pass up the chance at a scavenged meal if it happens to be available. However, they are not dangerous to Cybertronians; their teeth are too small to pierce most armor weights and they tend to be skittish, so the worst injury ever sustained from a mechallodyle is a small bite requiring a staple or two. They are excellent climbers and tend to work their way into any small hole or crack that happens to be available; some of them have accidentally been brought to other planets due to working their way into gaps in a spaceship's hull, though it is unknown whether any have managed to actually thrive off Cybertron.

Some mechs insist they are edible, based on stories from the war. While mechallodyles are not poisonous and do contain a small amount of energon, general consensus is that the effort required to catch them isn't worth the energy gained.


	10. Shriekbats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was inspired by some Unfortunate Work Events over the last week. I have, through no fault of my own, become the Designated Mouse And Bat Wrangler at the local library, so I've had bats on the mind lately. (As for why we have bats in the library, that's a very long story involving interesting financial decisions on management's part and some missing ceiling tiles, but for now, they're probably a fixture.)  
> I'm in the "bats are adorable (though not housepets)" camp. About 80% of my coworkers disagree. So this week's Cybertronian fauna theme was inevitable, really.  
> The name is blatantly borrowed from the Metroid Prime series, because I couldn't come up with a better one, though the creature itself is modeled on Nightstrike's alt-mode from RiD2015.

**Shriekbat**

Before the war, shriekbats were ubiquitous across Cybertron, especially in densely populated cities, due to their preference for high roosting spaces and relative sturdiness for their lightweight design. Though they can have up to a five- to six-foot wingspan*, their base frame is little more than a metal framework wrapped in mesh, with the exception of the small spark chamber and fuel processing unit; this allows them to glide on air currents, saving energy and making them very quiet fliers. Their wings are covered in tightly stretched thin mesh and fold up close to their bodies during roosting; when still, shriekbats are almost invisible, tucked up under eaves, on branches, or in convenient crevices. While the mesh is usually medium to dark gray, the metal framework holding the mesh together can be of any color, usually determined by region (with tropical species being brighter). The color of the metal framework produces a slight iridescent sheen across the mesh, though this is hard to spot except when seen in direct sunlight--as shriekbats are predominantly nocturnal, it can be difficult to identify what color any given individual is.

While shriekbats are well-adapted stealthy night predators, they are anything but unobtrusive. Shriekbats communicate through chatters, clicks, and squeaks, and are extremely vocal when gathered into colonies; when a colony takes up residence on/around a new building, the Cybertronians living there know about it more or less immediately. Additionally, their primary hunting strategy is to emit a sonic shriek that kills or stuns small prey, such as cyan wasps and mechallodyles, and disorients large predators (which gave them their name). Compressible joints and a hyper-flexible frame allow them to squeeze through almost any crack, no matter how small, and it was not uncommon to find shriekbats in the roofspaces of many otherwise well-maintained buildings. The destruction of war eliminated most of the large city-based colonies, but enough survived that while the species is no longer prevalent across the planet, it is not in danger of complete extinction.

Despite their small size, shriekbats are not particularly docile or easily trained, and the occasional attempt to domesticate them failed entirely. In addition to the difficulty of keeping something that can squeeze through the tiniest crack successfully contained and the sheer amount of noise an angry shriekbat can generate on a moment's notice, shriekbats have very large, sharp teeth for their size and no qualms about biting. Even dead shriekbats aren't particularly safe to handle; in a bizarre adaptation that scientists continued to study right up until the start of war, shriekbat frames process energon into an extremely volatile form for unknown reasons. While tiny equalizing systems in their frames generally keep this volatile energon safely contained, this containment ceases as soon as their systems go offline; the results can be an explosion on par with a small hand grenade. City-dwelling Cybertronians are advised to avoid dead shriekbats for this reason, and leave removal to properly equipped experts. Shriekbats left to their own devices will instinctively leave the colony and find isolated spaces during illness or old age; unfortunately, their definition of "isolated" in a city may be inside the roofspaces of someone's home.

*Probably not longer than the average Cybertronian's forearm--adjust accordingly for each continuity's typical size ranges


	11. Cobalt Crabs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long hiatus, this series is back! Probably with no regular update schedule--I have a very short list of more weird fauna to write about (made during quarantine while watching nature documentaries), but I have no idea when I'll have enough bullet points for each one to actually type them up. This particular one has been an idea for a while, since I wrote the idiom "useless as a cobalt crab in an iron mine" probably two years ago, but it took me a while to actually write this up (on a piece of unused receipt paper at work, because that's how inspiration goes sometimes).  
> Also, I know very little about real-world crabs, so any resemblance this bears to existing creatures is purely coincidental.

**Cobalt Crab**

Cobalt crabs are about the size of an average Cybertronian's hand, maybe two and a half to three feet across* at their largest, and rarely weigh more than twenty-five pounds. Despite their name, they come in multiple shades of blue, ranging from almost black to bright sapphire. Whatever the shade, healthy crabs are always vividly colored; dull colors are a warning sign that their food source has been contaminated or begun to dry up. They have impressive claws and mandibles, used to dig through layers of metal to reach energon veins below the surface.

As the idiom "useless as a cobalt crab in an iron mine" might suggest, cobalt crabs are found exclusively around energon veins and were a common sight in energon mines before the war; a decently sized crab population in an area was an indicator that rich energon veins could be found there, and mine managers often monitored the crab populations when there was a concern about the veins being mined dry or somehow contaminated. They feed only on fresh energon and are harmless to living beings, but sometimes have a tendency to chew on inert equipment in search of the fuel inside; most mine managers learned quickly to keep their equipment locked up at night. During the early years of the war, there were reports of cobalt crabs feeding on fresh corpses, but avoiding any that had been dead for more than a day; presumably the energon was no longer fresh enough for them at that point.

They are edible, with an extremely high energon content relevant to their size; however, eating them was often associated with the lower classes (since they were an easily accessible source of food for miners and tunnel workers) despite the fact that they are reportedly tasty. Magma sharks and other underground predators also commonly hunt cobalt crabs, especially deep under the surface.

When the energon veins were used up during the war and the hotspots stopped replenishing them, cobalt crabs became severely endangered; however, they would make a rapid comeback if Cybertron were restored.

*As always, adjust to appropriate sizes depending on continuity/headcanoned average sizes for Cybertronians.


End file.
